Monthly Archives: September 2007

Dartmouth alum Zach Hafer attended the presentation of Dartmouth board of trustees chairman Charles Haldeman and charter trustee Michael Chu on Monday evening and kindly filed the following report at our request: I went to the “conversation” with Haldeman and Chu last night at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. After being introduced by David Spalding, both Haldeman and Chu spoke for about five minutes. Haldeman focused on “something »

On day 2 of his yin-yang argument over Hollywood with David Ehrenstein in the Los Angeles Times, Andrew Breitbart lands a few haymakers: Perhaps our exploration of our political differences in Tinseltown’s paper of record can be an exercise in creating a bridge to our shared values: Getting to live. Given that you are a gay expert of gays in cinema and an upstanding liberal Democrat, and I’m straight with »

Tom Witosky of the Des Moines Register says that John McCain is hoping for a revival in this year’s presidential campaign similar the one his friend John Kerry experienced in 2004. Indeed, McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, told Witosky “”It is the Kerry model in a lot of ways.” Davis added: Iowa always tends to punish the front-runner right down at the end of the campaign. So we want to »

I do, sometimes, from a political perspective. But I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the music. That was a busy decade for me. Others, though–my wife, for example–are very fond of the music of the Reagan era. Well, how bad can it be? In the Forum, a regular poster called Electra went to Patsy’s and confessed her longing to hear more music of the 80s in a thread »

Today I attended a program sponsored by The National Review Institute on energy production and national security. The participants were: (1) Larry Kudlow (moderator), (2) Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, (3) David Hamilton of the Sierra Club, (4) our friend Steve Hayward of AEI, (5) Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical, and (6) James Woolsey, former director of the CIA. Hamilton, Woolsey and Liveris all advocate government action, including the manipulation of »

Congressman John Kline has just returned from a quick trip to Iraq and Afghanistan; the visit to Iraq was his fifth. Kline, one of the few Congressman professionally qualified to evaluate events in Iraq–he is a retired Marine Colonel–was impressed by what he saw there. Here, he talks about Ramadi: “The security situation there is just truly amazing. Just amazing,” he said in a telephone interview. Kline said the Marine »

Robert Bluey at Red State reports that Republicans have crafted an alternative to the expansion of SCHIP, the children’s health insurance program I blogged about last night. The Republicans task is a tricky one because any alternative must, as Rob puts it, “satisfy conservatives and shore up enough support among moderates to sustain the veto.” Republicans were unable to craft such a compromise two months ago. Now, however, it looks »

Investors Business Daily shines some sunlight on George Soros’s secret promotion of unworthy causes through the inaptly named Open Society Institute. (The editorial is one in a series on Soros and MoveOn.org that IBD compiles here.) IBD criticizes the lag between OSI’s financial support and the disclosure of the support: Soros’ “shaping public policies,” as OSI calls it, is not illegal. But it’s a problem for democracy because it drives »

Historian Arthur Herman speaks for me in characterizing Columbia’s hosting of Ahmadinejad yesterday as a squalid mistake. Herman draws on the appropriate Churchillian analogue to capture Columbia’s disgrace: Adolf Hitler got the clear message of the 1933 Oxford Union debate: We will not oppose you. Regardless of Bollinger’s “tough questions” yesterday, Ahmadinejad the Iranian president is bound to use his speech to a hall of “open-minded” Americans as a major »

My new friend Andrew Breitbart writes from the heart of la-la land where he co-authored Hollywood Interrupted and helps compile the Drudge Report. This week the Los Angeles Times has paired him with David Ehrenstein for the yin to Andrew’s yang on Hollywood. In his first installment, Andrew responds to Ehrenstein’s celebration of the coming fall antiwar movies: To the Hollywood defeat set the Iraq War is painted as Abu »

Jeffrey Rosen, the liberal law professor, has written a long, fawning piece for the New York Times Magazine about Justice Stevens. Even though Rosen basically has produced a love letter, Ed Whelan shows that the “incoherence and idiosyncratic willfulness” that mark Stevens »

I haven’t written yet about the congressional battle over extending the State Children’s Health Insurance program (SCHIP), and I don’t think my partners have either. The issue is an important one in itself and also, quite likely, a precursor of a larger battle that soon will be fought over “HillaryCare” or some variation thereof. Currently, SCHIP is a targeted program that provides health insurance for children of low income families. »

Hugh Hewitt limns the outline of President Bollinger’s fantasy world in his speech preceding Ahmadinejad’s address at Columbia’s distinguished lecture series. He also takes the measure of Dean Coatsworth’s pathetic examination of Ahmadinejad following the address. Hugh writes: President Bollinger suggested that Ahmadinejad’s speech to the Council on Foreign relations last year led to Ahmadienjad’s party losing local elections, thus indulging the twin absurdities that Iranian elections are free and »

A Columbia University faculty member has kindly forwarded us this message from President Bollinger: Dear fellow members of the Columbia community: I would like to share a few thoughts about today’s appearance of President Ahmadinejad at our World Leaders Forum. I know this is a matter of deep concern for many in our University community and beyond. I want to say first and foremost how proud I am of Columbia, »

Potfry at The Nose on Your Face claims to have obtained an advance copy of some of the queries submitted by Columbia University students for Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who visits the campus today as part of his continuing worldwide goodwill tour: Dear Esteemed Leader: It seems the explosives you are supplying to the freedom fighters in Iraq aren »

More evidence that Dan Rather has clinched his status as a national laughingstock can be found in this column by Charles Lane of the Washington Post editorial board. Lane was once the editor of The New Republic and in that capacity (as recounted in the movie “Shattered Glass”) had to clean up the mess created by the phony stories of Stephen Glass. Fabricated reporting, in short, does not appeal to »